Household appliances are manufactured at a factory and then must be shipped to a retail store or other location. Sometimes such appliances are shipped to a facility where they are to be installed in apartment or dormitory units. The appliances must be packaged at the factory so that the risk of damage during transit and storage is reduced. For small appliances such packaging may include housing each appliance unit in an individual cardboard box along with suitable packing materials. A plurality of the appliance holding boxes are then arranged on a pallet or other supporting device and enclosed within external packaging for transport. Such external packaging may include cardboard covers and stretch plastic wrapping in order to hold the unit boxes together and in engagement with each other and the pallet. Numerous pallets may be packed in shipping containers, trucks, rail cars or other suitable devices for shipment to locations such as warehouses from which the pallets are distributed to other facilities such as retail stores, construction sites and the like.
Upon arrival at a retail store or other location, the external packaging must be removed to access the individual unit box packaging. The unit box packaging often remains with the individual unit until it reaches a consumer's home or other location where the unit is to be installed and operated. At the point of use, the packaging associated with the individual unit must then be removed and discarded. Because the appliance unit is held within an opaque box until reaching the point of installation, it is possible that the unit may differ from a demonstration unit that a consumer has seen and/or the illustrations of the particular unit which are shown on the packaging. Sometimes when this occurs, the unit must be repackaged by the purchaser and returned to the retail store or other establishment from which it was obtained.
Existing appliance packaging systems and methods may benefit from improvements.